Hyde Park Barracks Domes Restoration Project

This week, we wanted to share with you a conversation we had with one of the passionate people who work at the Hyde Park Barracks: Curator Gary Crockett.

Conversations about Domes: Gary Crockett talks from Historic Houses Trust on Vimeo.

What was fascinating about that conversation was the number of different meanings the domes took on, depending on who you were referring to.  We could view the domes as the architect Greenway having some fun – having designed a very imposing sandstone structure, he caps it off with two wooden-shingled domes that are whimsical and almost ephemeral compared to the building they are decorating.  We could view the domes as an unnecessary and expensive item to maintain and repair – and we imagine what it must have been like for convicts arriving to the Hyde Park Barracks as it fell into a state of disrepair with the dilapidated domes and broken windows rendering the dominating building desolate and terrifying. We could view the gatehouse in terms of another of its uses – as a child’s bedroom at one point, and at other times a location for lover’s lunchtime trysts.

So what happens when we conserve or preserve a building or site?  Most of these places do not revert to their original uses, but are reimagined as museums or gallery spaces.  We return the building to a state of stability and functionality in order that we might create a new life for the building through the ways in which we enable people to see its purpose and meaning in new ways.  In that sense, restoring and old buildings from the past links us to our history and heritage by giving us the opportunity to view ourselves and our current lifestyle differently.

Come and check out the domes, or contribute a shingle to our paper sculpture dome we’re creating for Domes Day on Sunday 13 November and see Hyde Park Barracks in a whole new way, thanks to two little wooden domes.

During one of our conversations with visitors to the Hyde Park Barracks Museum, someone commented that one of the beautiful things about old buildings is the thick walls and high ceilings – remnants of an era where things were built to last.

It’s a far cry from today’s throw-away society where as soon as something shows signs of age, or breaks down, we chuck it out.

Shingled roofs, however, were never that sturdy with an average lifespan of 20 to 25 years.  So whilst the imposing facade of the Hyde Park Barracks remained in place, within a relatively short time frame the original domes were in a state of disrepair.  Once removed, the gatehouses remained domeless for 150 years before the restoration process was undertaken.  This week we had our own mini ‘domes disaster’ when our sculpture prototype housed in the Hyde Park Barracks Museum started to lose a few of its shingles.  In our case, it wasn’t a design problem – it was more about cardboard + glue + lots of kids in a busy museum space.  What’s interesting is the artist’s response: we won’t bin our prototype, we’ll repair it.  Many works of art, much like our cardboard and paper dome sculpture, are ephemeral but the ideas behind them are often ones that we spend lifetimes exploring.  Our dome will be built to last a day, with the purpose of housing all the decorated shingles people have been sending in as part of our conversations around the domes restoration project.

If you’d like to contribute a shingle of your own, you can download a template from here. Check out this short how-to video made with the help of one of our new friends:

Make a shingle from Historic Houses Trust on Vimeo.

Just as Greenway and Macquarie were undeterred by unexpected obstacles in the construction of their grand vision for Sydney, we will take inspiration from the indomitable spirit of our forefathers and get back to the glue guns to have our sample dome sculpture repaired in no time! Your shingles will help us a great deal in making a glorious public sculpture on November 13 for Domes Day.

Here’s a conundrum…the HHT has just removed the hardwearing fibreglass coverings from the roofs of its guardhouses and replaced these with frail and costly shingles that will start deteriorating as soon as the sun and rain starts belting down, which is already. We’ve reinstated a key, albeit quirky detail, giving the mighty Barracks its elegant entrance back. But unlike the sturdy brickwork of Greenway’s convict building, the guardhouse shingles will be lucky to last more than 30 years at best.

Why do you think its a good idea to rebuild the domed roofs and cover them with shingles…?

North Guardhouse, June 2009

North Guardhouse Oct 2011

For the past two weeks, Matthew and I have been talking to people  – the staff of the Historic Houses Trust, visitors to Hyde Park Barracks and people on the street – about domes, asking them about their favourite buildings.Check out a video of our conversations here:

What’s in a dome? from Historic Houses Trust on Vimeo.

There are a number of ways we can draw attention to an idea or message and sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are messages everywhere in our public spaces left by ambitious architects and forward thinking urban planners.  Those messages include aspirations for our society, examples of our skill in engineering and design.  But a lot of the people who we spoke to all agreed on one thing: we don’t make buildings to last like we used to and preserving heritage spaces is vitally important in remembering where we’ve come from.

Matthew Aberline, with our giant inflatable arrow outside Hyde Park Barracks Friday 14 October

Part of measuring our progress involves the ability to reflect.  To look back on our past and see how far we have come.  What we love about the Hyde Park Barracks Domes is that they are a very whimsical and understated symbol of a period of time in which Australia was developing the beginnings of nationhood beyond its function as a penal colony.  Most people who walk past them wouldn’t realise this on first look, and we’ve enjoyed sharing the story with people of all ages from all over the world in our workshops and conversations.

You can join the conversation too via twitter, facebook, or entering our shingle design competition in the lead up to Domes Day, Sunday 13 November.

In 1994, we asked the archaeologist Robert Varman to paint us a picture of how the guardhouses were furnished and fitted out, based on marks, holes and gouges in the brickwork. Robert’s drawings, shown below, are sketchy but accurate and give us some idea of how convict guards and later caretakers made use of this cramped room, by attaching shelves, cupboards and fireplace furniture to the brickwork and leaving tell-tale traces.

North guardhouse interior before 1819

North guardhouse interior after 1819

North guardhouse interior after 1848

These drawings are reproduced from Robert Varman’s Background report toward a plan of management west compound wall and structures Hyde Park Barracks / Dr Robert V J Varman for the Hyde Park Barracks 1994 (with later illustrations). Report held in HHT’s Caroline Simpson Reference Library.

Matthew Aberline pointing the way at Hyde Park Barracks Museum today. Photo Gary Crockett

As ‘Domes Day’ approaches, or should I say approacheth, Matt Aberline and Nicole Canham from Polyartistry are gathering random, off-the-cuff observations from passers-by, using a giant inflatable arrow to focus attention on the job at hand.

What would you say about our beautiful new domes… an important addition, whimsical fun, crowning achievement or needless expense?

Intact mid 19th century ‘torpedo’ bottle (ug269) recovered from north guardhouse in 1982, on display at the Barracks. Photo Gary Crockett

At least 25 alcohol bottles, along with 8 flower pots and 1 ‘sauce’ bottle, lurked beneath the ground in the north guardhouse, according to archaeologists working here in the early 1980s. Could this mean that the 19th century occupants were big drinkers, and pot plant enthusiasts? Its more likely that the room was used for dumping rubbish.

Among the many bottles uncovered were stoneware vessels for stout, black glass bottles for beer or porter, square base bottles for gin and even one for schnapps. The ‘torpedo’ bottle shown above was one of 2 discovered. These were used for carbonated water and designed to be lying down to keep their corks moist, swollen and air-tight. Archaeologists have dated this deposit between 1870 and 1898.

If anyone’s got a suggestion about the flower pots, we’d be keen to hear about it.

Skyline Design participants in action at the Hyde Park Barracks Museum this week

This week Polyartistry has been holding skyline design workshops in the museum of the Hyde Park Barracks.  It’s all part of our conversation around the restoration of the Hyde Park Barracks Domes.

We talk a bit about favourite Sydney buildings and why they are important, we think about other symbols and signs that we pass by all the time and discuss the meaning that they have for us…and then we spend some time in the lovely silhouette room imagining and making new buildings and spaces for Sydney.     Why would we stop and chat about buildings in this way, or have kids create something from their imagination rather than focus on facts or another more obviously educational outcome?  Because there needs to be some starting point in the journey from the personal meaning that we invest in precious familiar objects to a more outwardly focussed caring about our shared spaces which reflect the heritage and values of a community of people rather than just one person or family.  When we do this, we are building stuff – giving other people an opportunity to build stuff for themselves – not only in terms of making buildings themselves, in this case, but also in terms of contributing to a set of experiences which enable kids to make connections between their inner world and the world around them.

Those of us who are passionate and knowledgeable about art, or music or architecture need to keep in mind that preserving this heritage requires custodians both now and in the future to ensure the ongoing care and maintenance of places that tell collective stories.  One way to do this is by creating a welcoming intellectual space for young people, an entry point into ideas of what we preserve and why, and what we would create if we had the chance.  It’s great to offer kids a beautifully presented and engaging museum space where they can discover many things they didn’t know, but in order to have them leave with a sense of caring or ownership about what might happen to that place in the future requires its own conversation.  A conversation where they can imagine the future of our shared spaces, and how they might be part of it.  That’s really what’s at the heart of the domes restoration: caring about a space that is significant in the story of our society to the point that we want to see it returned to its completed state.

We have one more Skyline Workshop today, Saturday 8 October, at 2pm.  We are also talking to people from midday to 1.30pm. Come and tell us what you think about the domes!